Straggler

I only tuned in so I could watch John Terry be all grumpy and upset (there isn't much in the world of football that makes me smile anymore so I'll take my enjoyment in any way I can) and that sod Jose goes and subs him out of the game.

Nope he has no English team. I don't understand how this happened either.....

Sign me up to the Hutton fan club. I was there against Watford and I would have him down as one of our better players. He handled the bomb squad better than most players would do. For me he was player of the year last year and he is my first choice at rb. Consistent and professional in a villa age of unrelenting shite.

I tried to make my son a Villa fan. I had him sat on my knee as a baby when we beat Manu at old Trafford (apart from a brief gabby related moment when I jumped up too fast). His first villa park game was when we last beat man city and that was an awesome day. I gave him my scarf that day to remember it by. He is Barcelona fan today It's the only reason I had second kid

4 people dedicated to defending is not the same as having a defence. Richards as the captain needs to be responsible for organising that back line and it is palpably disorganized. As a physical specimen he is great and his attitude is really good, but if the back 4 are not a unit he is failing. I think that despite his personal strength that he is defending as an individual at the expense of the team. You can get away with that up front, but at the back it just doesn't work

Crowd seems a bit louder now

Is anyone else worried that they decided to target a football match? I go to loads of sporting events all round the world and the thought of a threat being at the next one crossed my mind. I know standard operating procedure is to carry on, as to change is to let the terrorists win. I know the odds are low that I will get caught up. However I know it will be in my head next time I travel to a game.

Marvellous. I didn't know this competition existed. What a wonderful collection of goals. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Where is ibra though? I'm sure I heard him say that he is the best and all his goals are better that everyone else's and that he is a footballing God from whoms glory we should avert our eyes. Or is this a runner's up list of some kind?

I can see where you are coming from, but saying that he is better tha TS really is damning with faint praise. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say at the time of his sacking Sherwood had the worst record of any manager in the top flight in Europe. It's like being hit by a drunk driver as you both drive the wrong way down the m40. Both are doing a horrible job of driving but the drunk one will still be worse. (Sherwood is the drunk driver on the wrong side of the motorway in this analogy obviously and the more I think about it the more it suits him)

It's pantomime season coming up and Delph makes a perfect villain (not Villan I hasten to add). I'll happily boo the crap out of him because it is part of the spectical and farce that football has become. Otherwise meh. He is a symptom of the modern game an employee of a franchise moving to another. I'm thinking of taking up supporting Tesco and cheering when the stock goes up or going mental when my favourite cashier gets a better job at waitros.

That is some top draw trolling. I concur with great enthusiasm regarding your last sentence.

I saw my mother in law die of cancer. We spent most of her last days by her bed from the last times she could communicate (all she wanted was to see the kids as it gave her a little joy) to the last time she had her eyes open and how scared she looked even with all the drug's in her. She was so helpless sad and scared it broke my heart but it has already been said here that cancer is a bastard. I can't see any positive from that and every time I think of death I put myself in her position. It scares the crap out of me the idea of wanting to take one more breath and not having the strength to do it then feeling your body shut down for the last time.

Good discussion this one. My 2 cents is based on the idea that a car driving sensibly and legally by a machine cannot get into an accident. I am happy to concede that accidents may be less likely and cars crashing into each other could become a thing of the past. However I had a day just this week when pedestrians around Oxford seemed to collectively decide to suicide themselves under my car. Fortunately I managed to avoid them but it is only by a matter of inches in one case and not a single one of them seemed to understand that the roads may have cars on them. It is not hard to conceive of a time when pedestrians or a group of them put a self driving car in a position where it does have to decide who to kill. I can even imagine people deliberately throwing themselves in the way as a dare or indeed a protest. People can be idiot's and the software needs to be prepared to deal with them.

I was at the game yesterday and am happy to report it was fantastic. I also predicted a 20 point win to NZ so won the sweepstakes too. Best game of the tournament that I have been to and a game very much worthy of the final. I've not had a chance to watch the game back on the tv yet but it seemed a pretty fair result. Standard of rugby was fantastic, it will be a shame to go back to watching England again.

I am the reincarnation of nostradamus. Just as I predicted I would be.

You make it sound like he's a player......I think he has been right up for every game.....its the players being up for it, is in doubt. Which is Sherwood's fault. Motivating players was meant to be what he's good at. Without that, I'm not sure what positives he brings to the role. im not sure motivation was ever a strong point of his, if it was I wouldnt have first hand witnessed an abject failure to turn up on the cup final. He is a chancer nothing more nothing less You may be right as it is possible that with Lambert having lost the plot so badly and gone so negative that Sherwood got an initial reaction out of the players simply by allowing them to take the Lambert shackles off and encouraging them to go out to attack, create chances and score some goals. That I guess can be the trouble with the initial bounce you get from a new manager in that it may not be a long term indicator as to what is to come. I guess we will find a lot out about Sherwood and his ability to motivate the players, or their willingness to put a shift in for their manager, on Saturday. Given the importance of the game I expect us to come out all guns blazing and really taking the game to Swansea. For what it’s worth I think we’ll win by a couple of goals resulting in Sherwood remaining in post for a while longer at least which as long as he starts to get results suits me fine as that is the bottom line for me. I have seen some say even if we win on Saturday they want him gone. Those supporters are living in la la land though if they think that could happen. A win gets him till the Watford home at least given the fixtures before that. I am fortunate I guess as I don’t despise Sherwood like some and remain relatively neutral with him. If he starts to get results then great I am happy to see him stay. If he doesn't immediately get results though, meaning the next game, then I will be happy to see the back of him and see someone else get a chance. Mark I totally understand why you maybe felt the need to reference Lambert in the first paragraph but to be honest I'm not as on board with the whole "got an initial bounce from the players" as some on here are. We'd have finished higher and further away and not relied on other teams results last season if that was the case but there you are. Fact is he is manager in his own right now and IMO, and the opinion of a majority of others it seems, he is doing it badly. Not sure why people are living in "la la Land" to want him gone even if we win on Saturday. It's their right to have that opinion and a lot do. Me included. See my thought is that he is wrong for us now. Wrong now and wrong in the future so one result doesn't do it. I'm not sure either we as a club, or him as a person actually, can continue basing his tenure with us on one result, the next result or if he wins he can stay a bit longer at least until XXX game in the future if he loses he has to go which I am reading from your post. Cant run a club like that. Back him or sack him For me if he is wrong now he'll be wrong after Saturday regardless of the result. I happen to think the decision makers at the club feel that way too now and not just based on results but based on how he has handled himself. Taking the back him or sack him thing, there hasn't been much baking this week has there? I dont despise Sherwood. I've said before it's difficult to form a judgement on someone like that until you have spent a fair while in their company personally. I've met him sure but certainly not long enough to form an opinion of despise or not. I just happen to think he is a poor manager wrong for us right now. I think if he stays much longer we will definitely go down. As it is I think there's a greater than 50:50 chance of that this season anyway and a lot of that is down to him, not all but a lot. I think we need to get someone in and maybe with an eye on rebuilding for a championship promotion push. The club is in a very very great mess it is hard to underestimate the level of shit we are in right now to be honest it makes the mess that GTMK1 referred to as a minor trouble. It's going to take some effort to trun this great club around, Sherwood is not that man for that job. Not now and not if we beat Swansea! Oh contrare. Just this week Mary baked her version of a sugar-free carrot cake and Paul made a lime and passion fruit charlotte russe.

An article from Sherwoods mate that criticises the players and the club but supports the manager. Funny that he claims to have the inside track on what training grealish is having over the international break too. I'd be surprised if he knew who Paddy Reilly was before ts called him. All in all it is a poor analysis (ffs he is pinning the Leicester loss on Grealish) at best and at worst is more ts led propaganda. If only Tim could organise a team as well as he can organise a media campaign.

You are definitely setting them up to fail if you leak team news way ahead of the game. If the team is set out as described in the telegraph someone needs firing for that alone.

Leaking your team selection days before the game is not generally considered best practice.

He won't get pushed on it though. This is the sport media not Jeremy Paxman. The sports press is in the main as spineless as our manager. They deserve each other

Sherwood can f right off. He is a cowardly little snake in the grass. What he is doing is worse than anything Delph did. Chucking the players and the club under the bus to save his own worthless skin is bad enough, but the underhand manner in which he is doing it is the true measure of the man. I'd get rid this morning if I could.

I could never actually hope that we lose. I can't imagine actually willing an opposition goal into our net or feeling anything other than joy at a goal for us going in. That said if Sherwood gets binned off after a loss to Chelsea it sure will soften the blow.

You see that's the sort of post that can be easily made when we're losing week after week out but I don't see it, I don't see this rebelling on the pitch although obviously no idea of the mood in the dressing room or training ground during the week. What I have seen in our games this season is a severve lack of quality and belief. Think back to last season and the amount of goals we were scoring, benteke, Wealth and Grealish were involved in the vast majority of them. Now without out those two proven premier league quality players in the final third, Grealish still has his moments but is struggling to influence games with poorer quality final third players and too much expectation placed on a kid who's not played 20 premier league games yet. Not starting Gil dosen't helped either. We also lack that game understanding most sides have...to not see out a 2-0 at Leicester and to lose it is bonkers and you can see it has messed with the players minds as our performances since then have been dire...at least there was a bit of promise in the August games. Ultimedly we're a team that lacks conviction...we can't keep clean sheets and look very dodgy with Lescott in there now and we struggle to score goals when it's 0-0 in games. We lack cohesion in linking up all parts of our team which you see in other sides like Palace and Swansea. That's why we're not winning games, not because the players are going on strike as they don't like Sherwood. I'm not saying that the players have gone on strike. My point was almost the opposite of that. I don't think he has lost them yet I'm just surprised that this is not the case. I do expect the style TS is employing in the media to start grating with them before long, but I think our poor form is down to boring old footballing and managerial reasons (for now).

No way, I deal with that in the classic English fashion. I eat the food, hating every bite, tell the waiter everything is fine, pay leaving the minimum acceptable tip and then spend the whole way home complaining about how awful it was. Sorta like what getting a season ticket feels like.

I said when he joined that he would not make it past Christmas this year. This was because I saw him as a man that was out for himself rather than the team. I figured that he would lose the dressing room in pretty spectacular style at some stage for that reason alone, as he began to chuck others under the bus rather than man up himself. I was however expecting the results to be better than they have been and will be surprised if he gets fired for bad results before the dressing room revolt gets him. I get the feeling that Fox thought Tim was the Brit version of Mourinho with all the arrogance and swagger. Sadly Mourinho gets his players to run through walls for him Tim just gets his to smash their heads against the same walls. I'm still deeply disappointed about this, I badly wanted to be wrong and to have the next bright young manager in the UK blossom with a vibrant new Villa team. With the summer transfers I even thought it may be happening. Sadly it isn't happening and I will be stunned if Tim has it in him to turn this round. It is only a matter of time before the players decide to give up on him as to my mind, if we are worried about what he is saying in public you can be reasonably sure the players will catch up sooner or later. May as well pull the trigger now and move on with as much time as possible to put right what once went wrong.